


Looking for Trouble

by JacarandaBanyan



Series: Tony Stark Bingo [7]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst, Established Relationship, Happy Ending, Insecure Tony, Irony, M/M, Multiverse Shenanigans, Prompt Fill, Steve and Tony travel the multiverse, Tentacles, Tony Stark Bingo 2018, Tony worries about their relationship, and don't have a fun time, then realizes that they actually have zero (0) problems and everything is wonderful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 05:54:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16362122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JacarandaBanyan/pseuds/JacarandaBanyan
Summary: In a fit of insecurity, Tony builds a portal to alternate dimensions in an effort to prove to Steve that their relationship is doomed. Ironically, this ends up strengthening their relationship.Or: Non-Powered AU Stony dimension-travel to various universes, including the MCU, at some point post-Civil War/Infinity War.





	Looking for Trouble

**Author's Note:**

> For the Tony Stark Bingo Prompt T4: Multiverse shenanigans
> 
> I know I should be working on more of my longer-term projects but I really want to get some of these bingo fills out.

“Remind me again why you want to open a portal to another universe, Tony?”

Tony grinned and hit the ‘run sub-program’ button. 

“Come on, Brucie-bear, don’t you wanna prove that alternate dimensions exist? It’ll be the biggest scientific discovery since the last big paper we published!”

“We’ve already proved that alternate dimensions exist, Tony, we can publish the paper now. Opening a dangerous and untested portal and attempting to visit these other universes is completely unnecessary.” 

“Bruce, honey, it hurts my scientist heart to hear you say such things. I couldn’t live with myself if I passed up this golden opportunity to go on a double date with us in another universe. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“It’s waiting for the go-ahead from my sense of lab safety.” He could feel Bruce’s folded-arms raised-eyebrow I’m-judging-you look on the back of his neck, but compared to Steve’s golden-retriever-of-justice look this was nothing. 

“Come on, Banana Muffin, it’s safe. It’s just untested is all. Now come on, chop chop. I want to get this thing portal up and running so I can win an argument with Steve.”

Bruce made a strangled sound behind him.

“Tony,  _ please _ tell me you’re not going to open an _ indescribably dangerous _ portal in your workshop without any regard for process, safety regulations, or anything else meant to keep people like you from crossing the line between super scientist and supervillain  _ so that you can win a fight with your boyfriend.” _

In his own defense, it was an important bet. 

“Don’t look so judgemental, Bruce, I’m sure you’d do the same if you had a bet with Thor.”

“No, I wouldn’t. I would once again be in the position that I am in now, trying to convince Thor not to do the incredibly reckless thing. Come on, Tony, don’t we have to put this before an ethics board or something?”

“Why should we? If I made it and I’m testing it out on me, myself, and I, all of which are well-informed, completely willing participants who no ethics board could ever prove have been coerced, then why bother?”

“Because that’s what you do with stuff like this, you submit it for review before you do anything stupid.”

“I’m not doing anything stupid!” Tony protested. “I’m doing something smart! No one’s ever gone through a portal to another universe before!”

Silence followed this pronouncement. It stretched for several seconds, then for minutes before at last breaking. If he hadn’t known that the door to their university’s lab squeaked, he’d have thought Bruce had left.

“What is this argument even about, Tony?” Bruce finally asked. 

Tony turned back to the portal so Bruce wouldn’t be able to see his face.

“Well, you know how I sometimes get with people I like,” he said. His voice was perfectly smooth and casual. “I forget an important day, or I come on too strong, or I isolate myself instead of talking about my feelings, or I fail at communication in some other way, or they get tired of me spending so much time devoted to science, or they just realize that they can do better than me. There’s a lot of possible outcomes, but they all really come back to one root. I’m kind of a mess of a human being hiding behind a well-crafted mask, Brucie-bear, and everyone figures that out eventually.

“So I sort of warned Steve about that over dinner last night, and he got upset. Which I don’t get, I’d have thought he’d appreciate the warning since he seems like the type to worry if I disappear for a week or accidentally blow up the dorm or something. He went on and on about how he was serious about this, about how long we’d been friends before we started dating and about how he didn’t like seeing me purposefully tearing myself down, which I should have seen coming, to be honest. He’s like the gold standard of people, of course he’d try and tell me all that stuff.”

The subprogram ended, and he started the next one.

“So I said, ‘look Steve, I’ll prove it to you, I’m not good enough to date you and sooner or later one of my many faults is going to destroy our relationship,’ and he said ‘you can’t prove it Tony because I’m with you to the end,” and so I said ‘then I’ll find an alternate universe where we’ve already run into relationship issues and show you!’ and he said ‘go ahead and try, I know every version of me loves you, I’ve loved you since the day I met you back in middle school science class and I always will, and there’s nothing you can do to change that,’ and then he did that thing with his muscles that distracts me so I’d stop arguing with him.”

“Tony…”

The way his friend said that word was heavy and sharp, and stuck painfully in his ears. He was abruptly sure that he had to get out of the lab. He was getting too worked up for this.

He stood up and paused the subprogram. 

“I’ve gotta go meet Steve, see you later.”

* * *

“Steve, Steve, I did it! I made a portal that can take us to other universes!”

Steve smiled at him and handed him a cup of coffee, because he was the best boyfriend. Come to think of it, was it morning already? He could have sworn they weren’t down there  _ all _ night. What day was it? Did he have class today? 

Steve kissed his forehead as he drank his coffee. 

“Congratulations, is that why Bruce texted me saying not to listen to anything you said or agree to anything you proposed?”

“Yeah, don’t listen to Bruce, he’s being a spoil-sport. Really, I thought Thor would have convinced him to live a little by now, but I guess not.” Tony paused, considering. “Maybe it goes the other way around, and Brucie-bear influences Thor? Hey Steve, you play sportsball with Thor, does he seem calmer or less adventurous lately?”

Steve, ever the clever sportsball strategist, didn’t even look twice at Tony’s attempt at misdirection. 

“Tony, I’ve told you over and over again, I’m not breaking up with you because you think you might possibly do something to hurt my feelings in the future. That’s silly.”

“Steve, I’ve heard you rant about straw man arguments to recognize one when I hear it. It’s not that you might get hurt, it’s that you almost certainly will, and it’s not that I think I’m going to hurt your feelings, it’s that I have literally never managed to have any sort of long term relationship that didn’t end up going down in flames.”

Steve circled around the counter and wrapped his arms around him. His chest felt warm and solid against his back. He leaned down to press his lips against his ear, and his breath on the tiny hairs there sent shivers down Tony’s spine. 

“Sounds to me like you think you might hurt my feelings.”

Tony took another sip of coffee, then set the cup down so he could turn around and hug his boyfriend back. 

“Come on, Steve,  _ portals! _ Regardless of your completely wrong opinion about my ability to be a decent romantic partner, you have to admit that portals are cool. Don’t you want to see alternative versions of us? A sort of ‘what if we went to the Italian restaurant instead of that burger place?’ type deal.”

He would have continued to elaborate on how cool his portal project was had Steve not picked him up by his thighs and held him up so that they were face to face. Instead, he squeaked and wrapped his legs around his waist. 

Steve smiled and leaned forward so their noses were touching. 

“Okay, Tony. Show me your portal. Find me a world where I am somehow ill-used by my wonderful, smart, generous, loving boyfriend. I challenge you.”

Tony nuzzled his face into Steve’s shoulder and murmured “challenge accepted” into his skin.

* * *

The first attempt at the portal did not go anywhere near as well as Tony had expected.

They tumbled through the portal into several meters of warm water. Tony quickly closed his eyes and mouth, but the taste of salt still tingled on his lips. 

After a bit of thrashing, they managed to kick to the surface. Tony was pretty sure he’d accidentally kicked Steve at one point in his confusion. He gasped for air and rubbed the water out of his eyes, then looked around at the brand new universe they’d almost drowned in. 

His first impression was of a landscape filled with holes and tentacles. They were brightly colored and sparkled brilliantly in the sun where they broke the surface of the water. The smaller ones were only a few feet long, and the largest ones rose like ancient trees in the distance. Sometimes they retreated back into the dark holes, sometimes they appeared from their depths. 

Tony looked around for some land to head towards. He was definitely going to get tired if he had to keep treading water like this. The water wasn’t all that deep; he could clearly see the bottom. It stood to reason that there would be land nearby. 

However, no matter where he looked, there was nothing but water and tentacles stretching to the horizon. 

His heartbeat kicked into don’t-panic gear. 

“Tony?” Steve asked, “Where are we? Did the portal work?”

“I think it worked in that it brought us to an alternate universe,” he replied. “But if it did, it brought us to one that diverged with ours a long time ago. Like, the early history of evolution and possibly Earth’s formation went really differently here. That’s my best guess anyway.”

Steve raised an eyebrow at the tentacles. 

“You know, Tony, it doesn’t count as ‘a world where we’re not together’ if there’s no  _ us  _ to be  _ together.” _

“Alright, alright,” Tony groused. “Come on, let’s go back through the portal and try again.”

They swam over towards the portal, which hovered a little bit above the water. He was careful not to let any of the tentacles brush his leg as he moved carefully through the water. He didn’t know anything about these tentacles, but he wasn’t about to touch them without a safe route to escape. Or a really good reason. He was a scientist, he was open to being convinced. 

When they reached the portal, Tony reached up to grab onto the edge and pull himself up, only for his hand to go right through the edge of it. 

“Here,” Steve said, “I’ll try and lift you.”

He wrapped his hands around Tony’s hips, then heaved him as far out of the water as he could. Unfortunately, without anything solid under him, he sunk under Tony’s added weight, and only managed to lift him a few inches. Rather than slipping through the portal, Tony fell those few inches backwards into Steve, knocking them both underwater. 

Tony looked around for something to use to get up and through the portal, but there was really nothing around but water and tentacles. Really big, unsettling tentacles that sometimes blocked out the sun when they rose out of the water and that Tony really hoped wouldn’t drag him down into the depths of one of those dark holes. 

Wait, there was  _ nothing _ but tentacles. No other animals were anywhere to be seen in the clear water. Tony was no marine biologist, but even he knew that warm, shallow-but-not-too-shallow water was usually filled with life. What were these tentacles eating? Were they even eating? Perhaps they were photosynthetic, like a sort of plant? 

Perhaps they weren’t as dangerous as he’d first thought.

“Hey, Steve, what if we tried climbing one of those tentacles?”

Steve looked dubious. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? Could one of those things even take our weight?”

“That one there’s enormous, Steve, of course it can take our weight. Here, I’ll go first.”

Steve still looked dubious, but he dutifully followed him as he swam towards a clump of tentacles. 

He wrapped his arms around a particularly thick one near the portal. It shuddered a bit when he touched it, like flicked jello, but it didn’t retreat back into the water. Satisfied, he started inching up it with his arms still wrapped around it, koala-style. It was difficult not to slide back down, but doable. Once his body was out of the water, Steve followed suit. 

They didn’t have very far to go before they were at portal height. Tony pushed off the tentacle and fell through the portal, which was a little higher off the ground than he remembered. His shoulder hit the laboratory floor hard. That was definitely going to bruise.

He heaved himself to his feet to help Steve, but when he looked back through the portal he froze. Behind Steve, the other tentacles were seething like a nest of snakes. They seemed to be forming a ring around Steve’s tentacle, and in a burst of panic Tony realized that his initial impression was right. The tentacles were definitely aware of them. 

He lunged forward, reaching back through the portal for Steve. 

“Come on Steve, hurry!” He shouted. “The tentacles are moving!”

As if on cue the tentacles started curling and thrashing. The one Steve was holding onto curled in on itself. Steve jumped, but to Tony’s horror his leg got caught in the fold and he jerked to a stop mid-jump. Tony reached out and grabbed his arm, but he wasn’t strong enough to win a game of tug-of-war with a tentacle the size of a tree. Desperately, he reached blindly around with the hand that wasn’t holding onto Steve for something he could use. He knocked a stack of papers of a work table, felt some paper clips scatter after he flicked them too hard- there! His screwdriver!

He grabbed it like a knife and put all of his remaining strength into one last pull. When Steve was as close as he could get, he lunged forward and stabbed the tentacle with the screwdriver. 

It jerked back, sending Steve tumbling back through the portal, but it seemed more surprised than hurt, and Tony quickly grabbed his laptop to shut down the portal. 

Just before he hit the button, the sea floor on the other side of the portal heaved and bucked, as though some enormous beast just below the earth was pushing it’s way up. Then the image disappeared, and Tony collapsed against Steve’s side. 

“Okay, so that didn’t go as planned, but we can try again!”

And Steve, perfect Steve who was always happy to join him on his science adventures, just laughed shakily and pulled him into a hug. 

“Sounds good, but let’s eat something first.”

* * *

The next portal brought them to a universe with little to no oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere. The one after that would have dumped them into empty space if Steve hadn’t grabbed Tony’s shirt at the last moment- it looked like the Earth had never formed and become a planet in that universe.

The problem, it seemed, was that they had been focusing on the wrong part of the multiverse theory. If every possible decision or action spawned another universe, then there were infinite universes where the two of them had made different choices. Unfortunately, there were even more worlds where dinosaurs had made different choices, or where CO2 levels in the atmosphere were slightly different, or where the very formation of the Earth was different. Universes where Tony Stark and Steve Rogers even had a chance to exist were in the extreme minority.

After that, Tony finally bit the bullet and went back to tweaking his portal so that it would send them to somewhat  _ similar _ alternate universes.

* * *

Tony and Steve stepped out of the new and improved portal into what looked like a freshly-made battlefield. It must have been a strange battle; there were great gouges in the ground that seemed to be placed almost willy-nilly, and goo of various colors and viscosities mingled with the everyday blood and mud. Some of them were steaming, and surrounded by scorch marks. Tony was tempted to ask Steve to carry him so he wouldn’t risk stepping in any of it.

Nothing about this place looked familiar. They were definitely not in the US, but beyond that they could have been on another planet for all Tony could tell.

Their arrival was quiet, but it immediately drew the attention of a small group of people huddled together. They rose as one and turned to face them like a school of fish, all reacting to a sudden perceived danger. 

He heard Steve gasp beside him, and was tempted to do the same when he got a good look at the faces of these strange people. They were all the faces of people he knew from around campus, but harder and emptier. Twisted, somehow. 

He put his hands up in what he hoped was a truly universal sign for ‘I mean no harm.’ 

“Hey there, people who look terrifying versions of people I know from school, we’re definitely not here to cause trouble.”

One of them stepped forward, and after a second Tony realized with a jolt that that was  _ Steve,  _ his boyfriend, with a beard and what he was starting to think is alien blood all over his clothes.

“Tony?” Bearded Steve said, “Is that you?”

“Sort of?” Tony said slowly. “I was testing out a portal to other universes, looking for one with the two of us in it.” He gestured to himself and his Steve, who appeared to be having some sort of intense interview with one of the others, conducted only with the eyes. He glanced over to see who he was looking at, and nearly fell over in shock himself. How come alternate-him looked so  _ old? _ What was he, fifty? And why was he standing so far apart from the others? The only one standing anywhere near him was a blue woman who looked like a robot from those cheap old sci-fi paperbacks Steve’s best friend Bucky always lent him. Shouldn’t he be over with Steve? And why was he wearing a giant metal suit?

Bearded Steve took another step forward, and Tony didn’t miss the way his senior citizen self’s eyes snapped over to him immediately, like he was watching a threat.

A sudden cold descended on him. Why was alternate universe him looking at alternate universe Steve like that? He couldn’t imagine Steve doing anything that would make him look at him with that  _ fear _ just barely covered by exhaustion and pain.

_ (But then again, it wasn’t too long ago that he couldn’t imagine their galaxy without Earth, or an Earth populated by giant underground tentacle monsters either.) _

“Why were you looking?” A blonde woman asks. She has Natasha’s face, but everything else is wrong. She’s shorter and skinnier and coiled like a snake ready to spring, and her hair is completely different from the cascading red curls he was used to. She’s suspicious, but just looking at her Tony thinks perhaps she was the sort of person who was suspicious of stray cats she passed on the street.

“Well,” Steve- Tony’s Steve- said, finally forcing his eyes away from Tony’s older counterpart, “Tony and I had a silly argument, and he built a portal to other dimensions as part of an elaborate plot to prove me wrong.”

Bearded Steve nods, and his hands curl into fists around the strange weapon in his hands- an alien weapon, perhaps? A sharp cracking sound startled the group, and he quickly releases his fists and dropped the now malformed weapon. Tony looked between the finger prints dup deeply into the strange metal and Bearded Steve, and his heart starts racing.

“What are you?” He breathed. “In this universe, I mean,” he added at the last second.

His older self smiled like he’s testing how much it will hurt if he moves his lips. “We’re superheroes, of course.”

Tony’s eyes flickered to the dead bodies, human and not, that lay strewn across the ground, then back to meet Steve’s horrified gaze.

He suddenly wanted to leave, right now, no matter that they  _ finally  _ found a universe where the two of them existed and knew each other. This place made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. 

“Yeah, it looks like it worked. Good experiment. We’ll just leave before we cause any time paradoxes or something.”

He grabbed Steve’s arm and began pulling him back towards the portal. 

“Tony,” Steve says, and for a second Tony thinks he’s talking to him before he realizes his boyfriend is staring at his alternate self like he’s seen a ghost. “What happened? Why do you keep looking at him like he’s a threat?” He nodded towards Bearded Steve. “Did something happen?”

Tony abruptly wanted to lose this argument. 

His alternate self shook his head slowly, lips parted but no sound, like he’d been stabbed and was too shocked to scream. Tony’s arms were covered with goosebumps now and he wanted to run but Steve wasn’t coming and he was too heavy to drag. 

“Because I trusted him,” his alternate self said, like the words were heavy and viscous and difficult to force out of his mouth, “And he lied to me. He lied to me for years.”

Tony felt each word like a punch to the gut, and he couldn’t help but look at Bearded Steve. It couldn’t be true. He knew Steve, and Steve was loyal and trustworthy and  _ honest. _ But Bearded Steve’s face was an emotionless mask full of cracks, and guilt shone through each and every one of them. 

One of their alternate selves started walking towards them, and Tony fled. He heard Steve’s footfalls just behind his, but he didn’t dare look back to make sure he was following. He didn’t look back when he heard familiar voices calling for him to wait, Tony, come back! He didn’t look back when he crossed through the portal into the lab. He didn’t look back when he grabbed Steve’s hand and closed the portal on a universe more unimaginable than any other. 

* * *

They sat together on the lab bench for several minutes, holding each other and not daring to look the other in the eye. Tony tried to subtly press up against Steve like a cat so he could feel his reassuring warmth, and wondered whether he should commit the alien corpses to memory for science purposes, or make a consolidated effort to forget them. 

At the very least, he could say he felt more secure in their relationship. Even he couldn't screw up badly enough that he and Steve would end up on a horrific battlefield, unable to look at each other and afraid of what the other might say or do.

Finally, Steve broke the silence for him. 

“I’d never lie to you, Tony.”

He huddled closer to Steve and hunched his shoulders up.

“I know you wouldn’t.”

“I don’t ever want to hurt you like that. I don’t even know what was happening in that universe, but I know that I don’t want it to happen here.” Steve’s voice wavers, weak and unsteady as a newborn deer’s legs. 

“It won’t,” Tony said, trying to be reassuring, “you’d never hurt me like that other me was hurt.” 

“I have in at least one universe,” Steve whispered. “Wasn’t that the proof you were looking for?”

Tony pulled him into a hug and squeezed as tightly as he could. 

“I take all my arguments back. This is terrible proof. Couldn’t stand up to a half-asleep logic class full of freshmen.” He grimaced. “It wasn’t even the proof I was looking for, anyway. I was looking for a universe where  _ I _ screwed up, not  _ you. _ Besides, all of those alternate universes were strange. For all we know, that universe was just as distant and impossible as the one with the giant tentacle monster. So I propose we just never mind all that.”

Steve laughed, high and light in his chest, and wrapped his arms around Tony. It made something warm unfurl in his chest. 

“Okay. Sounds good. Want to go take a nap on the couch together? We can just chalk it up as another weird universe, like the one with the without oxygen.”

Tony nodded against his chest, knowing he could feel it.

“Sure thing.”


End file.
